Weird RUB encounter with "Large Cargo"

[panthercules]

Well, that was disappointing - while heading north around Scotland in my Type VIIB I spotted a lone freighter of an odd shape I hadn't seen before - according to the recog manual it was a "large cargo" (or something like that) that looked pretty juicy at around 12,000 tons or so and had a fairly deep draft of maybe 8.9m, IIRC

Anyway, my first 2 eels (set for magnetic at about 9.5m) passed harmlessly, well under the keel, without exploding. I still had time so I snapped off a couple more, set to impact at 5m this time, and they bounced harmlessly off the rounded bottom of the hull, as it was even shallower draft than I had adjusted for after the first misses.

Fortunately, the weather/seas were calm, so I gunned it to death. Unfortunately, I only got credit for some 2600 tons, as if it were just some small coastal or something :(

Wasted 4 torps and got my hopes up for a big score, and then had to settle for a tiny one - does anybody know what's up with this new ship type and why the recog manual data about it seems to be wrong? Is there some way to fix that or should I just ignore the manual and treat all of these things as just another type of small coastal?

[Syxx_Killer]

I'm not using RuB, but I am using sergbuto's additional merchants mod. That is his mod that was included in RuB. The Large Cargo was based off the German Commerce Raider. There is also a Transport based off the British Auxiliary Cruiser. I don't know why you had so many troubles with the LC. It is an easy ship to sink. Aim for the middle section and usually one torpedo is all that is needed to break it in half (impact pistol; 4m).

[andy_311]

I don't use rub or any other mod apart from sh3 1.4+ harbour mod and I get 17K+tons when I sink her but why in later years of the war she's not armed?

[panthercules]

I don't know why you had so many troubles with the LC. It is an easy ship to sink. Aim for the middle section and usually one torpedo is all that is needed to break it in half (impact pistol; 4m).

Well, I think the whole problem was my relying on the info in the recognition manual about the ship's size and draft - if I'd known it was only 2600 tons and so much shallower draft I imagine I would have fired only 1 torp at it and that torp probably would have made short work of it as you say - however, thinking it was as large and deep-drafted as the manual indicated, I followed my usual practice of firing 2-torp salvos, and although I set the 2nd salvo shallower and for impact they still turned out to be too deep at 5 or 6m

I guess I'll know better next time, though it's still disappointing that it's not as big as the book says - it would have been a nice addition to my tonnage totals and vaulted me up a notch or two on the current Ace list that Adm. Doenitz so thoughtfully posts for us back at base :)

[Iceberg]

Well, I think the whole problem was my relying on the info in the recognition manual about the ship's size and draft

The recognition manual is correct, I sent a few LCs to the bottom (and most of them with 1 torp, impact) and they're 17000 tons alright. Just like the Commerce Raiders.

So it was either a bug or mistaken identity. You'll see next time if it does the same and only credit you with 2600 tons. It would suck to have a bug that displays a small merchant with the skin of a large cargo though! :down:

Good luck with that.

Iceberg

[sergbuto]

Fortunately, the weather/seas were calm, so I gunned it to death. Unfortunately, I only got credit for some 2600 tons, as if it were just some small coastal or something :(

There was a mod about varying tonnage of merchants or maybe it is included in SH3 commander. Are you using that? Can it be the reason?

[Kalach]

I think the 'tonnage randomiser' is in either SH3com or RuB, but I'm sure it's very subtle (less than 5-10% varience, not 13k tons).
I encounter these often and always get ~17k tons, so maybe it was a bug or such.

[Beery]

Large Cargo ships used to be 17,000 tons, but they were reduced to 11,200 tons in the most recent RUb version. The game accesses the data\Sea\NKGN folder to get the tonnage values for this ship. The Museum uses the NKGN_en.log file and the actual game uses the NKGN.cfg file. Open these and you'll see the tonnage value for the ship.

[BladeHeart]

Beery

Do you know what alterations were made to the vulnerable spots for this ship? Are they the same as the commerce raider, or have they been altered, i.e. the magazines have been removed?

Thanks

[panthercules]

Large Cargo ships used to be 17,000 tons, but they were reduced to 11,200 tons in the most recent RUb version. The game accesses the data\Sea\NKGN folder to get the tonnage values for this ship. The Museum uses the NKGN_en.log file and the actual game uses the NKGN.cfg file. Open these and you'll see the tonnage value for the ship.

Yeah - the 11,200 sounds about right for what the recog manual was showing - I remembered it as being 11-12K - and the ship I was attacking definitely had a new look with the big smokestack that I remember seeing on the one biggie I saw back when they were 17K, and the "large cargo" in the recog manual was the only thing that looked remotely like what I was seeing (and I saw it close up on the surface for quite a while as I was gunning it to death, so I don't think it was a case of mistaken identity).

If it happens again, I'll try to remember to take a screen shot

BTW - In my NKGN.cgf file, it's listed as 11,600 displacement. I'm running RUB1.43, with the RUB1.43 patch and the Beery Flotilla 1.44 mods (along with the Funkmod and my mod that uses historic u-boat aces for my officer's faces, neither of which would seem likely to have anything to do with these ship types)

[Beery]

Beery

Do you know what alterations were made to the vulnerable spots for this ship? Are they the same as the commerce raider, or have they been altered, i.e. the magazines have been removed?

Thanks

I haven't got a clue. You'd have to ask Sergbuto about that. It's his 'Added Merchants' mod.

[Beery]

As for this bug, all I can think of is that the game might somehow be defaulting to the tonnage of the original commerce raider. I don't see how that would be possible though - the way the game gets tonnage details is pretty straightforward, and other people using RUb are definitely getting the right tonnage for this ship.

[JScones]

Sunk two in one patrol only yesterday - correct weight recorded. Surprised the hell out of me seeing something so big.

Prob for me was, because I have deleted the _shp files from RUb1.43 to remove the realistic plotting changes, when I zoomed in max on the nav screen I got a text label stating "TGA image not found" or something. Easily fixed - exited the game and copied the C3 _shp file across (although, perhaps I should have copied the Commerce Raider one).

[BladeHeart]

Thanks Beery; I've PM Sergbuto.

[panthercules]

Well, ran into another one of these "large Cargo" ships just before dawn at the end of this same patrol, early 1940 northeast of Scotland. I had only 1 torp left, and it was in my aft tube. Fortunately, the weather was reasonably calm (borderline, 7m/s wind), so after closing to short range at periscope depth to make sure she wasn't a neutral and wasn't armed, I surfaced and decided to try to slow her down or stop her if possible with my deck gun, then finish her off with my last torp.

After an agonizingly long time (even at a reset 20 sec reload time), pumping all 40 AP and my last 45 or so HE into her bridge and waterline (although about 1/3rd of my shots went wild, I guess because of the fairly heavy seas - I didn't realize RUB 1.43 modeled that), I finally had her stopped and listing to port.

I then circled around to set up a stern shot from about 600m out, set to 5m impact amidships, and let fly - cracked her right in half and sent her flaming to the bottom - a beautiful sight and, unlike the first "fake" version I ran into, this large cargo actually gave me a little over 12K tons on my log. Life is good again :P

[BladeHeart]

Two pennies worth.

I have coversed with Sergbutto and apparently the vulnerable spots for this ship are the same as the commerce raider, including the magazines (think of it as carrying explosives).

After having occasion to reset my game, I have now altered the large merchant to have a tonnage of 9,600 and a renown reward of 270. This is a personal choice, but I just found it too big at even the reduced 11K+

:lurk:

[ming]

Sank my first one with the last two torps I had off northern England in a Type IIa. I was very happy to see the large weight...thanks to a lot of patience I managed two C2's on the same patrol :up:

[Beery]

I've taken a pretty radical step in reducing the Large Cargo to 7300 and the Transport to 8000 in the next version of RUb. The huge tonnage values were unbalancing the game because these ships tend to appear too frequently. Now the ships fall within the ranges of tonnage that are already in the game. I don't want to lose Sergbuto's great models, but some balancing had to be done in my opinion.

[Wulfmann]

Tonnage has become my latest thing as well. I have added the 1940 tonnage mod but reduced the small tanker to 3500 and will now reduce the medium tanker down to about 6,000 from 9K. I will add the Serg converted armed merchant cruiser as frieghter but make it about 4500 tons and add that to the convoy RND.
No matter how hard I try I am still sinking too much tonnage compared to the top aces. I feel reaching Kretscmer's 266K at 44 ships for 16 patrols should be as good as we can do. Just my personal view. By scaling back medal and renown so that remains the same ergo if the tonnage is halfed so is the renown requirement so you still get the rewards.
Even with all the reductions I score 56K last night and had 4 defective fish!!!!!
:damn:
My goal is to have 30K be the patrol of a career and 20K unusually high with 10-12K a very good patrol.
I want RUB in the tonnage war :rotfl:

Wulfmann

[iambecomelife]

I've taken a pretty radical step in reducing the Large Cargo to 7300 and the Transport to 8000 in the next version of RUb. The huge tonnage values were unbalancing the game because these ships tend to appear too frequently. Now the ships fall within the ranges of tonnage that are already in the game. I don't want to lose Sergbuto's great models, but some balancing had to be done in my opinion.

Good decision. For my installation the transport's 12000 and the cargo ship's 5800. These values are incorrect considering the models' size but this all goes back to SH3's lack of enough medium sized cargo ships. I have several cloned merchant ships and a motorized barge of less than 5000 tons in the "R&D" phase right now. Maybe once I create enough of them it will be possible to raise the tonnages back to the correct figures, since the likelihood that any given merchant you encounter is a large cargo will decrease substantially.

[Beery]

The other alternative was to make the game treat these ships as tankers - tankers are fairly rare. But I wasn't sure if it would work.

[AG124]

I reduced my Large Cargo to 8000 tons (originally I chose 11,600 tons), but left the Transport tonnage as it was.

The one thing I really miss about Aces of the Deep which was never included in any of the Silent Hunter games was the good tonnage variation. Even though there weren't any more merchant classes than in SH3, the tonnage variation meant that you could encounter freighters of any tonnage from 2000-10000 tons, and 1000 tons (for some reason there weren't any freighters between 1000-2000 tons, such as 1516). Tankers were similar in tonnage, but I believe the maximum tonnage was 12,000 - I might be wrong. Tonnage could overlap in classes too - for example a "Medium Merchant" could be 5000 tons and a "Heavy Merchant" could be 4000 tons. Here are the ships and their tonnages, if I can remember correctly (some of these might be wrong, esp. tankers):

Light Merchant: 1000, 2000-4000.
Medium Merchant: 2000-4000.
Heavy Merchant: 2000-5000.
Medium Freighter: 5000-7000.
Heavy Freighter: 6000-10000.

Tanker*: 1000-4000.
Light Tanker*: 2000-5000.
Medium Tanker: 7000-10000.
Heavy Tanker: 8000-12000.

Troop Transport*: 9000-14000 (?).
Troop Transport*: 15000(?) - 20000.

*There were two tanker classes which were almost identical - "Tanker" and Coastal Tanker - I think one may have been included by accident as it seemed pointless to have two alike. They looked a lot like lake ships to me. Also, no distinction was made between the two transports names.

Except for 6000 ton tankers (?) you could have almost any tonnage of merchant. And if you sank one and it appeared in your log, it would appear as "merchant" or "tanker" not "medium freighter" or "heavy tanker" - which to me is a good thing, as I would rather general merchants than designated classes.

This was a really good way to handle ship tonnages, and if there was any way, modders should use this model, IMO. If Ubisoft has any representatives reading this, then maybe they should consider it.

PS - I never liked the Medium Tanker, as it had two funnels. Most tankers seemed to have one, and I kind of preceived it as unrealistic. Could someone post a screenshot or two - maybe someone could mod a couple of AOD ships someday in the future when more important ones have already been made. I should put Windows 95 on one of my older computers and have a look at it again someday, but for now I should probably stop rambling... :88)

[iambecomelife]

I also loved the AOD variation in tonnage - like a real uboat commander, you were often unable to tell exactly how much a ship weighed. The only problems with AOD tonnage was an overabundance of high-value targets - big tankers, troopships, and those eight-derrick freighters of 8000 tons or more. Still, I loved wasting two or three 10000 tonners with one salvo - :arrgh!: .

The tanker with two funnels always looked weird - all two-funneled tankers I know of were converted whalers with the funnels abreast, not in-line. The producers apparently realized it, since "Command Aces of the Deep" featured this tanker's 3d model with no funnels. Apparently they tried to correct the error but ran out of time.

I'm currently trying to create a million and one merchants at once with sansal's cloning tool :doh: . I have a whale factory ship ingame now, but without the necessary changes to the model - still working on that. I also have the LST as a rare superstructure-aft freighter (yes, a few of them existed back then). One interesting feature I discovered is that it's possible to have more than one cargo texture for the LST model, so I'm also adapting it as a German river barge with a cargo of Opel trucks and panzers instead of the allied vehicles you see most of the time.

[Beery]

SH3 Commander features random tonnage variation. The plan is to update this feature. When I do that, I'll bear this discussion in mind.

[AG124]

Looking forward to those merchants you are making. Sansal's tool is really making progress.

PS - Did CAOD drop one of the small tankers from AOD too? I never understood why there were two that were almost alike. There was one of the same design in Silent Hunter 1, as well.

[Wulfmann]

Well, I stuck those back in yesterday but changed the tonnage to 5800 for the ex-raider and 3800 for the transport. (I now reduced the ex-raider again to 4600 as it spawns more often as a 102)I also reduced the T2 to 5800 and the small tanker to 3500. Look at how much bigger the T3 is to the T2. I must be twice the size. When you look down a row at 6X the T3 is double the beam..
Of course my motive is to make it very hard to equal the 15K average of Kretschmer, the top scoring sub of WWII but I am still sinking over twice the ships at 50% higher tonnage.
I spent yesterday adding these merchants to the RND file in convoys and added more escorts. Early 1941, 2 DDs a Frigate and 3 corvettes all 3 and 4 rated and that helped keep things hard, worst score in recent memory, 13.5K and only one from the convoy.
Again, I adjusted the renown and medals to give me the same levels as before but mistakenly upped the Iron Cross, 2nd class instead of the badge so in 6 patrols my entire crew has the 2nd class, LOL
IMO, the ex-raider would be better as a101 (Tanker class) so it would not appear so much. The transport I simply added by type to the RND so it appears a few times as there are no single 103 in the RND.
Ironically, the only 3 ships sunk on this patrol was 2 transports and a cargo. I have had an unusual amount of defective torpedoes the last few patrols. I blame the French!!! Where’s my Luger???, I need to pay a visit to the fish factory!!!

Wulfmann

[AG124]

Someone should resize the Large Cargo to make it about the size of a C2, or slightly smaller. No changes need to be made to the model itself. You could also rename it a whale factory (with or without resizing), and consider it as a type of tanker. I believe iambecomelife said that some whale factories looked similar to freighters.

[Farside]

I think the 'tonnage randomiser' is in either SH3com or RuB, but I'm sure it's very subtle (less than 5-10% varience, not 13k tons).
I encounter these often and always get ~17k tons, so maybe it was a bug or such.


was it neutral?